


Bramble

by The_Dark_Forest_King



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 03:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6036556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dark_Forest_King/pseuds/The_Dark_Forest_King
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne's point of view on her flight with the Bog King.</p>
<p>My own retelling of the Bog and Marianne's magical flight in the movie that had us all singing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bramble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grender on deviantart](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=grender+on+deviantart).



“Try thinking of this,” He caught the toad-hound’s mouth in his strong hands to keep its jagged teeth off me after I bumped into the ugly beast, “as an adventure!” He patted the warty hide lovingly before lifting himself higher into the dark canopy.

“Nnn… nice Goblin,” I told it and made hasty retreat after my guide.

A snarling growl was all I got in return for my compliment. It snorted at me, settled back on its hind legs, watching us fly away.

The air was thick with magic tonight. I had only flown a short distance before I looked down at the castle where the toad-hound guarded the entrance with eyes that bore through me even at this distance. It didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual since I didn’t really like it right back. 

I flew for a short time before the same feeling of dread welled in the pit of my stomach. The Dark Forest, with its strange sounds, mysterious lights, and unknown dangers filled me with a fear I hadn’t know since I was a podling on Father’s knee. 

I wanted to return to the safely of the castle and see how Dawn was faring. “Hey, lets .. lets head back.” I did my best to hide my growing anxiety at being out in the Dark Forest, even with a guide. A guide that flew in a lazy half circles around me .. and the spider web that was in my flight path. 

I was so lost in thought, that I didn’t see it until I nearly flew into it. I pull my wings back and hover there, sighing in relief. Where was my mind? So many things were jumbled and roiling in my head that I couldn’t even fly straight. Dawn was more than just a prisoner. She was the victim in a circumstance that I had no idea how to fix. 

As if sensing my distance, He asks “Why?” His voice is steady, even playful. He hovers in midair as if taking in the night like magic, his wings making those strange clacking sounds as each moved out a synch with the other, “The moonlight is perfect right now.” A flourish of his ornate staff with the shiny amber stone nestled in its webbed spider silk drove home the point that it is, indeed, a beautiful night. His form is etched silver against the full coin of a pregnant moon.

I flutter, trepidation in my wake; a gossamer-winged butterfly in a dark unknown place, nearly caught up in my own machinations to think clearly. I peer through the night-dewed spider web up at my enemy–now turned host. Thoughts of my potion cursed sister locked in his dungeon for her own safety and His; singing her heart and throat out as the spring thrush to his mate still fresh … but I need to stretch my wings, to fly, to think of way out of this unfortunate mess.

_Well, you wanted adventure ..now ..you got it!_

He leads the way and I follow along beside him. The smells are different here on the other side of the Fairy Kingdom. I never knew there was so much Life after dark. But I am a creature of the day. What did I know beyond the Border of our lands? A land I explored now with my tall, brambly, raw boned guide. Only an hour along we fought each other and then bonded as we gleefully torn down the romantic alter, Griszelda had quickly erected for us. 

I smiled. Correction: that we had thoroughly enjoyed _destroying_ in our shared misery! 

He still wore that hideous boutonniere on his chest like a medal of honor. I wondered why he had rescued it out from under my boot. It made of twigs, leaves, and a wilted daisy. I knew it was Dawn’s clever handiwork that hung on His chest over his heart. My sweet sister had used whatever material she had on hand to cobble her love token, the fairy symbol of devotion, and given it to Him with every little beat her daze-dusted heart. Its rustic charm reminded me of the first wedding boutonniere I made for Roland; the one that Dawn had rejected on sight when I showed her my hasty creation! 

I poured everything into it: every lovely thought, every happy memory, my heart into making that stupid damn thing that I was so proud of and couldn’t wait to give my future husband. Dawn and my three Spirit Nixies “fixed” it for me: a gorgeous red yellow sunflower was then placed into my hands. I couldn’t wait to give to Roland. In my rush to show him the labor of my love, I flew off and found him … in the arms of pretty, jade-winged fairy maiden… I don’t even remember what I did with his wedding flower …only that my heart hung like a bell in my chest that shattered into pieces every time I whispered his name!

He, my guide, seemed to cherish that bundle of sticks the rested on above his heart … _hmm where was his heart under all the chitin? ___But, if He hated love as much as he yelled with me that He did while we destroyed that eyesore of a room his mother made for us: why had he saved it?

My head hurt with too many questions, too many thoughts. I need to clear my mind. I hear the whispers of the mushroom line as we sail above them. I don’t know what they are saying but He doesn’t seem to mind. In the full moonlight, I can see blushing of the stars against his wings, they fizzle and fret like chestnuts in the fire. There is sadness in your smile and the years, parchment painted on wings and thorned scales.

We fly over a garden of new plants. He gently caresses a furred spiral as he passes that unfurls with such a delicate ease into a long green hand stretching skyward. Like a child with a new toy, I can’t help fluttering to each pod, touching them with a nervous hand, only to be rewarded, a sea of life unfolds around us like an emerald fan.

What strange magic is this that has taken up inside my heart and shakes me with its clinging to the ground?

He is a being of Autumn. When brush line is tinged in golden lining, ripened Harvest ready to give their essence to the Reaper for another season in gratitude. Natural, slivers of light etched in his dragonfly wings, as he thrums through the air, only to stop at a great expanse.

A few hours ago I was a hate smudge, a hardened grimace that threaten with the flash of my sword now sheathed at my side; my lips refrain from spreading into a tremulous smile as he walks along a line of what did he call them – venus fly traps.

I hear the _clacket clakket clakket_ on each step, one before the other, as his golden staff end triggers each open maw to close, creating a bridge across the expanse to the ground beyond. He moves with a grace that belies his angular form. He is … taller now, not hunched over like the elder I thought he was earlier this night. 

His back is toward me as I know what he expects of me and to the expanse that I am afraid to across. 

“Come on,” he turns with an inviting smile, making a courtly bow, gesturing with his left hand reaching back as if showing me the way, coaxing my choice further with that name, “Tough Girl!”

I test a toothy, slim-rigged bud with a tap of my foot experimentally, before swallowing the last of my fear down my throat … I follow his example as I wobble at first, then RUN over the slender path; my laughter burbles out from my mouth.

Each step is firm; I gain confidence with each one, feeling the rush in my ears as I cartwheel along, then I FLY over a still opened fly trap that snaps closed as my wings carry me over, then I roll triumphantly over the remaining line; whooping, joyous, breathless, as I wobble back on unsteady legs before Him; laughing, smiling as I haven’t in so many long and lonely months. My heart is lighter than dandelion fluff on the breeze then …

Then all I feel is air beneath my feet as I slip, lost in my joy. A chitin covered hand grabs mine and I look up at Him as he pulls me gently up. A smile tugs across his face at me as he settles me on my feet as gracefully as an fairy courtier before a dance, before flying off in a sizzle of wings.

I stare up, my heart flutters like a caged bird in the hunter’s trap. All vice is gone out of me in the wake of his wings on the moonlight … and I know that in my deepest part of my being … that

I .. am ..not as I was at the dusk of this day.

I try not to peek at the rainbows of his wings out of the corner of my eyes, but the star light catches and dances in them … and once again…

I am … blinded by his _goodness._

My gaze is brief. I feel transient staring at him so yet my growing intensity is poignant as my mind is opened no … roused as if from a long winter’s slumber.

The tide on my soul ripples out making more ripples across my body as it trembles. The meadows in my mind waken… to something new, good, untested. I feel I am more than I was and much less than what thought I perceived as the Truth; the Truth told and wrote to me in the books I read,by Father’s rule, my instructors, my own people. There is a sliver of doubt in my heart, the rumors and wild stories I hear in the Elf market place, at war with the new direction the tide of my soul has taken.

_If you go into the Dark Forest, you’ll end up like the Sugar Plum Fairy, locked away in the Bog King’s prison, where no sun will warm your wings ever again._

_Goblins are the reason why there is no Love left in the Kingdoms._

_The Bog King wants it all for himself._

_Goblins can’t never be trusted._

_Goblins steal our children, break them out of their pods and eat them._

_Goblins are the servants of the Black Hart, the Wyld one who feeds on blight and shadows._

I know now that these are but stories told in fear of the Dark. _Oh, Father, you could not have been more wrong. I love you, but this … all this must change._

The only real Truth I remember are in the stories my mother, Lyris, told me and my sister on her bed while she wrestled with the sickness that finally took her life. Of healing hands goblins had, of hot springs that warmed them in the winter while we flew to a warmer climate, their nobility in battle, and how they too loved their families. All these truths come to life when I see Him, my guide.

He leads me on foot across the damp ground. I spy animals I never knew existed in dreams as they roam the undergrowth. Moths the color of the moon. Bats drink in mid flight across the glass surface of a pond. Owls blink down at us from in the trees. I wonder if one would swoop down to make a meal of us, but He walks by with confident ease, pointing out things of interest. A frog singing to attract a mate. Crickets that chirp and firefly that dance in endless ballet that pierces my soul. There is a dark beauty here that I never dreamed was part of the Lady and Consort’s artistic, loving hands.

Then He motions for me to stop and silently goes ahead, hand signaling me to follow his example as I join him along a long ditch. I heard the sound of many, many legs that remind me of the sound His chitin makes when he moves. We both look up at the source: a long double-legged segmented creature with fused armor. We peeped up simultaneously watching it travel the length of its long body along the edge.

I am fascinated at the way this strange creature -a millipede He calls it- moves; I have to refrain from reaching out and touching it. He glances my way with pride and something else hidden in those blue orbs that fill me with a longing that I never knew before until this moment. 

I can feel a strange Magic binding us tighter than any bond I’ve ever had with Roland. Roland’s idea of a fun time was polishing his mirror collection; our topic of conversation was him asking me how his hair looked in this light or how this outfit matched his lovely green eyes. Back then I didn’t mind those things but now it all seemed so superfluous compared to ….THIS world surrounding me in its dark glory and my guide.

A slight wind catches in the petite sails of my purple and black tinted wings. I follow Him up to a brambly hedge of white thorns that blocks our path. He gestures to me to follow him into the thorny maze of death, which he does with skillful aplomb. The opening seems large enough for both of us to enter, I glide in carefully following his stealthy example. But my wing grazes a thorn and catches on the tip. I move slowly in these enclosed quarters to free myself, but in jerking my left wing free, my lower right is now caught! With some effort, pull my wings together and fly outside, staring forlornly at the opening, knowing that I can not follow him. 

He was made of this brambly thorn, his chitin rawboned to the eye. I am made of butterfly scales and nectar. How can we bridge this gap between our people and ourselves?

Then I hear the chittering of wings … returning to the edge of the abyss. He hovers with one arm outstretched to me in silent permission to guide me though the bramble.

_“Let it go, Dad!” I said for the thousandth time since we began this particular conversation._

_“Marianne”, Father was exhausted, but still determined to make me see things his way, “you’ll be a stronger ruler with a king at your side.”_

_I remember practice fencing with my three Nixie maids at the time. A parry sent one swirling out  
of control before I stopped midair, took off my blindfold, to gaze down at the only man I had ever loved in my whole life that never had let me down, and considered his words as I sheathed my sword. “I’m stronger alone.”_

_Father’s grimace meant that it wasn’t going to be the last time we had this ‘talk’. “I don’t want you to be alone.”_

His smile brightens my heart, his eyes filled with … hope?

_“Dad”, I landed, trying my best to explain how I felt to a man who was lucky enough to have found real love in his long life. “if I ever met a guy who looks me in the eye,”_

…with an helping hand outstretched to me as if …waiting for my answer ..

_I held Father’s hand and looked him straight in the eye- “and takes me by the hand,”_

I notice how elegant his hand is with those well manicured claws as I smile, my wing beats keeping time to my beating heart.

_–My other hand made fist to drive my point home that only made Father sigh– “and I don’t want to hit him…”_

I was already beyond …

_“I’ll consider it!”_

I slip my hand into his tapered elegant fingers. His hand closed protectively on mine. His chitin was unexpectedly warm. I didn’t count on it to feel so inviting.

I fold my large wings and he pulls me into safe, strong one armed embrace with my back to his chest. His diamond wings guide us slowly yet swiftly through the brambly maze. I feel my breath catch in my throat for the untold time this wondrous night as the white thorns float past, we turn in slow moving circle around the spires then the maze opens to a wall of tall rock. 

He uses his staff and parts a curtain of tangled vines that cover an opening with a grand flourish. I see emerald light shining inside and I take my first look at paradise. 

Is this what the Moonlight Gardens look like when a Faerie passes into Last Night?

Moonlight filtered in from an opening in the top and spread out like many fingertips dipped in ghostly hands running like mist across a morning pond. The cavern interior is a hollow dome with strands of emerald starlight tearing down in strands, ceiling to floor, like winter icicles I once saw before our Autumn Migration – as if weeping in laughter in an glowing gemstone face. 

This is what Beauty would look like if one beheld her face behind the Veil. 

He nods to me to enter first. There is room to fly but I am careful not to break the glass tears surrounding us. My wings touch one of green strands and there is bell like whisper like a child praying and giggling at the same moment. We fly up into the canopy of emerald light. I sing the lullaby Mother sang to me as podling and with each note I tap a tear-dropped segment that echos back to me in perfect harmony. 

I feel Mother and once again I am a child, chrysalis-snug, with her warm, strong arms around me; her lovely voice comforting me on the stormy nights I thought would tear down the Fairy Palace. I hadn’t thought of her in years. Not since I had took over care of Dawn and my father, Dagda.

He tells me that we must press on over vine draped canopy, over weathered and worn battlements of dried leaves, twigs, and burnt umber branches. We fly over an large field of blue flowers that look like the blue roses Mother made her dresses at festival time. He flies out in wide and wild way. I answer in my own flight, turning, twisting, tumbling; my heart as light as air. The blanket of blue flowers beneath us is radiant in the full moonlight. I wonder what they are called.

I hear a twig snap thinking he must of grazed the lower plant life with a leg. I race Him to around the base of sugar maple, pot marked with fungi that shelf out like stepping stones to the top of the tree. We glide like the mating raptors I have seen in the summer skies, with clutched claws as they spiral down in their death dance as they Join, only to separate at the last heartbeat before colliding with the ground.

He pauses on a branch, cluttering scales shift as he pauses and he catches me watching and asks if everything is all right? I say nothing as we face each other, breathless, happy and …

..he offers a flower in his fingers … so that was the sound … gesturing to me with smiling eyes …

I can only nod.

His gentle hand placing one of the blue brier roses behind my left ear makes me feel wanted. Not a desired possession to flaunt at Fairy Court during our mindless balls and endless dinners that celebrated nothing but our own conceit or a stepping stone to gain an army by marriage, but to only be wanted for myself, as plain as I am compared to my sister.

I feel the heat in my cheeks flare like a candle under a tinder and flint. My feet clinging to the tree so tightly that I found myself falling … yet again.

No words reach my tongue which is swollen with emotion; my eyes swim into his, an ocean of divine swallows me, with one glance, and my soul takes flight. 

What strange and magical feeling is welling between us I can not say or fathom. Only that I do not want it to end. I do not hear the hunting horn until it’s too late.

His face is softer now but then there is .. _doubt?_ He stares down in awe at the forest below … then his face hardens, screaming in a silent rage. 

“YOU …?” the disbelieve in his voice was tinged with regret and then anger; he paused then thumped his staff so hard against the tree that I felt it shake beneath our feet, “ **YOU PLAYED ME!?** ” And flew off in stormy rage back down to his home. 

“Played you .. I don’t ..?” What ever spell that had been between us was shattered when I finally heard Roland’s hunting horn -a gift I had given him for our three year anniversary– ring through the forest! Fleeing me and my betrayal, Bog was already halfway down the tree truck cursing himself for fool. I saw Roland and an army of royal guards behind him at the gates of the Goblin Palace far below in the distance. 

“Oh NO! Nononono …” I followed Bog as fast as my wings could carry me. 

_I had to make this right. Bog, I’m so sorry I didn’t know …_

“Wait!”

“I won’t be a fool again!” His anger grazed across me; it felt like black tears of rain falling heavily onto wings in the storm of rage. So much pain! Two wispy threads of different emotions play as his face, tugging furiously each other other then lightly back to another only to finally hardened into a flint-edged challenge as he push me back in midair with his weapon separating us.

“I didn’t know!”

“I wouldn’t follow me if were you, Princess, you won’t want to see what I do to them,” his voice dripped like hornet’s venom with each word and his eyes were a thundercloud. The Bog King that I knew of legend had returned to haunt my nightmares was staring at me, my betrayal still fresh in his eyes. 

“I won’t let that happen,” I answered his challenge with my own drawn sword, only to have it knocked from my grip and myself flung, unceremoniously, into gray streaming spider web and my sword fell outward onto an azure expanse caught in the nick of time in between the sticky strands.

The Bog King flew off leaving me, literally, hanging like a discarded toy. The blue rose stuck to the sticky strands as I struggled loose. Damn, he was fast. Better than I was with a weapon, but this wasn’t over! 

“I am so stupid!”

I cursed myself over and over as I jerked one arm loose, then a wing, then the other, and reached for my weapon that thankfully didn’t fall into the darkness. I cut my legs free and speed arrow fast after the Goblin ruler bent on doing something I hoped I wouldn’t later regret if I had to stop him for real, a second time in one night.

**Author's Note:**

> Author Notes: This tale has been kicking around in my mind for a very long time. I wasn’t a fan of the movie until I saw it over a dozen times! I didn’t love it, I didn’t like it or hate it, but there was something there that kept calling me back.
> 
> Strange Magic is the song title this movie takes its name from; one of ELO’s most beautiful songs and expertly remade by the voice talents of Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming. It is also my most favorite song of all time. 
> 
> The movie is stunning and it makes fun of itself. I like that in movie about magical creatures that may be living my in backyard. I have watched Strange Magic so many times and analyzed it to death for that “something” that kept leading me back to it. The Bog King is my favorite character, but it was Marianne’s growth as a character that drew me in. She goes from a clumsy, wide-eyed moppet who looked for love in the wrong person, and remolded herself into an athletic, take-no-prisoners woman, by donning new armor behind a hard edged attitude and a sword, so that she wouldn’t ever be hurt again. 
> 
> While other fans see and write fanfics about only that part of Marianne, I saw something more, something deeper. Even though Marianne has changed outwardly, she is still that same frightened child she was in the beginning on the movie when she accidentally flies into the Dark Forest picking material for Roland’s wedding corsage. 
> 
> She is flawed and suffers from the fairy’s prejudice towards goblins. I saw this in her reaction to Griszelda, when Bog introduced her as her mother. It is seen again in Sugar Plum’s back story of “That Fateful Day”. When Bog stares at the image of his live love, you can hear the poignancy in his voice as he said, “She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw.” Marianne’s first reaction to this is to make face and say, “Seriously?” but hearing Bog’s confession she learns why he used the potion. That was first chink in her armor falling away.
> 
> The next one is when she slips off the fly trap and Bog grabs her hand and lifts her up to her feet, wanting nothing more than her safety, and companionship on their flight. Her own words with her Dad come back to her then that awed look at Bog as he flies off .. and she sings the line that brings it all home
> 
> You’re waking meadows in my mind, making waves across my tides ..
> 
> then BANG it all makes sense … as the last piece of her armor falls off and her mind is open for the very first time! That’s the moment I first started to like Marianne as character. 
> 
> I wrote Bramble as my own telling of what was going on in Marianne’s mind during her flight with Bog. It may be too introspective for those of you fans to understand or like, but this is my jam.


End file.
